Join Catapult’s Alex Lowthorpe as he talks through why top up sessions are required for soccer player and when they can be delivered.
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So, we have a question here from one of our users.
Do I need to give extra work to the players
who didn’t play the match and if so, when?
Before we dive into the answers, let’s
look at some of the research.
Anderson et al.
Looked at squad status and the implications
for physical load throughout the season.
He defined starters as those who started greater than
60% of games, fringe players as those who started
30% to 60% of games, and non-starters as those
who started less than 30% of the games.
Looking at the differences between starters and
non-starters across training and matches, he found
the effect size was very large across
running high speed running and sprinting intensities.
When looking at running intensity, starters covered
approximately 92 km per season compared to 58 km for non-starters.
For high speed running, starters covered approximately
35 km per season compared to 19 km for non-starters and
for sprinting, starters covered approximately 11 km per season
compared to 3 km for non-starters.
When comparing starters versus fringe players, the same
very large effect size was apparent in sprinting.
Starting players completed approximately 11 km compared
to fringe players who completed approximately 5 km of
sprinting distance per season, indicating that unlike
total seasonal volume of training, I. E.
Total distance and duration, seasonal high
intensity loading patterns are dependent upon
players match starting status.
Therefore, there is a requirement to address this through
training exposure. To answer the first part of the
question, do I need to give extra work to
the players who didn’t play the match?
The answer is yes, but when?
Well, if we look at a typical week,
we have three opportunities before the next team
conditioning session, the first one being match day.
After the game.
It is not uncommon to see substitutes and
players who did not enter onto the pitch
receive high speed and sprinting top ups.
This is often preferred by players and staff as their
schedules match with days off at the same time.
The next option is to split it over
match day and match day plus one (MD+1).
However, this means players have no days off.
Alternatively, another option is for these players to complete
their extra work on match day plus one (MD+1).
However, this doesn’t give the players the best
chance to recover and perform at their best
during training on a match day plus two (MD+2).
Thank you for listening.
I hope you found that useful.
